Why Buyers Still Say No to Better Tech

Millions at Risk

Between four and six million people in India work in business process outsourcing. In the Philippines, the sector accounts for 8-10% of GDP. In both countries, jobs in BPO are a path to the middle class and are under threat from automation. The risk is real but its realisation is slow.

AI can handle 80-90% of call centre volume, according to Steve Hsu, Co-Founder of SuperFocus and a professor of both physics and computing. Yet it handles next to nothing today. There are lessons here for both buyers and sellers of technology.

Proving, Selling and Integrating Technology

Technology startups are tough. Invention is only the start and my experience and that of many entrepreneurs I talk with, is that distribution is harder. Technology has to be proved, sold and integrated into existing ways of working.

Our experience at MSBC is that companies are no longer impressed by a demonstration of RAG. That’s retrieval augmented generation, a technique to get a language model to perform tasks with a specific set of data. The companies want to experience AI solving problems they face.

The Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that while three quarters of people trust technology companies, only half trust AI. A video or demo of AI at work only goes so far and buyers are sceptical until they experience it themselves. I learned at OTAS the importance of putting demos in the hands of buyers.

Selling technology is the next hurdle after proving it works. AI is about 1/10^th the cost of humans in call centres and as a result will takeover in time. Until then, managers whose skillset is handling large teams of people are not in the market to buy a black box that can do their job.

Sales people are often told to sell using FOMO – your competitors are doing this so buy before it’s too late. Unless this fear is greater than that of being replaced, this argument falls flat when selling new technology. This remains the case even when CFOs are pushing managers to explore new systems.

In some industries, unions are including clauses in labour agreements that slow or stall the adoption of technology. In February, US Longshoremen agreed a deal for a 62% pay rise over six years, which includes safeguards against encroaching automation. That rate of cost increase make change inevitable, but not on a meaningful timescale for a salesman.

The final challenge is integrating new technology into an existing workflow. At OTAS we discovered our product was nice-to-have and had to double down on preventing customer churn. Unless people know instinctively how they will use a product, closing a deal will be a struggle.

Handle Objections While Selling

The best way to handle objections is with examples throughout the sales process. Your marketing will hint at what you do and trigger the question “how do they do that?” Your landing page or follow-up materials will answer that question and start to build trust.

Thereafter, B2B sales require negotiation. This means having buyers convince themselves of the value of your product. This will be easier if you have already addressed objections. You do this with case study stories dotted throughout the marketing, trust building and selling process. As well as what, why and how you solved a client’s pain, you must also include the initial objection that you overcame.

Imagine you are selling an AI call centre. The budget objection is taken care of by the much lower cost of AI, but you would still need credible return on investment calculations to hand. The authority objection of line managers is addressed by making sure the CEO or CFO knows the financial benefits.

The need objection may be the hardest to address. Even 1 in 100 failures is an expensive problem and can lead to rejection of technology. When BPO started out in Asia, humans were only able to do 30-40% of the tasks they were set. They are much better today but far from perfect, while AI is already close to 90% accurate. Reminding buyers of the human error rate would boost the chances of our imaginary call centre sale.

The final core objection is time. Our experience at MSBC is that we not only have to design and build AI, we must prove it works before buyers will adopt. The fear and uncertainty around the technology puts a greater burden on the selling company than, for example, the BPO sales we make to manufacturing industry.

The Decision to Change

Selling new technology faces considerable challenges. This is particularly the case when you are uprooting an existing way of working, especially one with the national significance of BPO. Your cost advantage may be clear, but it is human resistance to change that is your major hurdle. The better you understand the most common objections that buyers have, the more likely you will help them make the difficult decision to change.

Questions to Ask and Answer

1. What is the most common objection I face when selling my product?

2. Do my case studies and sales stories address this objection?

3. Do I have data about my prospect’s pain point that supports my sale?

Here are 3 ways I can help

1. Book a consultation to talk about AI.

2. Read the deep dive into data science.

3. Explore use cases using accelerated computing.